CHAPTER XVI ON THE METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD
Mr. Chaplin's Humane Circular to Poor Law Guardians—Crooks Appointed a Member of the Metropolitan Asylums Board—Chairman of the Children's Committee—His Knack of Getting His Own Way—Reorganising the Labour Conditions of the Board's Workmen.
We have seen that the policy of Poor Law reform which Crooks was carrying out at Poplar won the good-will of the Local Government Board. Soon after Mr. Henry Chaplin took his seat in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet of 1895 he sent for Crooks, and the two spent a whole morning discussing the weak points in our Poor Law system. Mr. Chaplin made many notes during the conversation, and at parting good-naturedly remarked that Crooks had given him enough work to occupy the next two or three years.
Shortly afterwards, the Minister and the Labour man made a personal investigation of Poplar and other East-End workhouses and infirmaries. The visit to each institution was a surprise one. When the two men entered the children's ward of the Mile End workhouse, they found the nurses absent and the children screaming. In about half a minute Crooks had all the children laughing.
"What's the secret of your magic?" asked the President of the Local Government Board.
"It comes natural when you are used to them," said Crooks.
As already shown, Mr. Chaplin declared emphatically for the Poplar policy. His notable circular to Poor Law Guardians, for which as President of the Local Government Board he will perhaps be best remembered, gave the support of the Government of the day to that policy of humane administration of the Poor Law which Crooks had established at Poplar. It laid down three principles which the Labour man had urged upon the President at their first meeting:—
1. Children to be entirely removed from association with the workhouse and workhouse surroundings.
2. Old people of good character who have relatives or friends outside not to be forced into the workhouse, but to be given adequate out-relief.
3. Old people in the workhouse of good behaviour to be provided with additional comforts.
Mr. Chaplin further showed his confidence in the Labour Chairman of the Poplar Guardians by inviting him to become one of the Local Government Board's representatives on the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The work meant a heavy addition to Crooks's public duties, with the London County Council and the Poplar Guardians demanding so much of his time. There was no hesitation, however, in accepting the new office when he found it afforded further opportunities to serve the afflicted poor and help neglected children. Mr. Chaplin's successor at the Local Government Board, Mr. Walter Long, twice re-nominated Crooks to the same position.
Although the Asylums Board comes but little before public notice, except in times of epidemic, it has far-reaching powers. It is the largest hospital authority that any country can show. It has fourteen infectious disease hospitals with accommodation for nearly seven thousand people. It maintains six thousand imbecile patients in four asylums. It looks after the welfare of several hundred boys on a Thames training-ship, and of some two thousand children in various homes.
The members, or "managers," as they are called, are all nominated either by London Boards of Guardians or by the Local Government Board. An indirectly elected body is the last that expects to see a representative of Labour. Imagine, therefore, the amazement of this somewhat select company when, in May, 1898, a Labour man walked into their midst as the nominee of a Conservative Cabinet Minister.
He was eyed at first with suspicion. The suspicion soon changed to curiosity. The Labour man never spoke. The managers expected a torrent of loud criticism, and here was immovable silence. For the first five months Crooks never opened his mouth at the Board meetings.
"What's your game?" asked a friendly member in an aside one afternoon.
"I'm learning the business," was the quiet reply. "This is an old established Board with notions of its own, and it's not going to be dictated to by new-comers. But you wait, my friend, and you'll find before long I'll be getting my own way in everything here."
So it proved. During the two or three years that he was Chairman of the Children's Committee and of a special committee that reorganised the hours and wages of the Board's large staff, he never lost a single recommendation he brought before the Board.
"How is it, Mr. Crooks, that whatever you ask this Board for you always get?" he was once asked by Sir Edwin Galsworthy, for many years the Board's Chairman.
Crooks returned the sally that it was because he was always right. His real secret was—convert the whole of your committee. A majority vote in committee never satisfied him. Nothing short of the support of every single member would suffice. Many times in committee has he adjourned the discussion rather than snatch a bare majority.
"Let's take it home with us," he would say jocularly from the chair. "Perhaps after a week's thought you'll all come back converted to my view. If not, then you must come better prepared to convince me that I am wrong than you are now."
The difficult and delicate work of reorganising the Labour conditions of the Board's workmen and attendants was at last brought to a triumph. He came out of the chair with the goodwill of the whole staff and of the entire Board of Managers. His colleagues included large employers of labour, eminent medical men, and retired army and navy officers. All agreed that he had settled for them Labour difficulties which had created nothing but confusion and perplexity before.
Working on his invariable rule that it pays best in every department of work to observe fair conditions, he scored a signal success on the very body where before his coming Labour members were regarded as revolutionaries. As at Blackwall Tunnel, he gained his points without losing the trust or friendship of the employers of labour.
The task put his administrative ability to a test which only able statesmen can stand. The rare faculty he has of obtaining the maximum of reform out of existing agencies carried him safely over every shoal.
Crooks is every inch an Englishman as well as every inch a Labour member. He applies his Labour principles on typical English lines; hence his success among all bodies of Englishmen, no matter what their party or class.
Few men have higher ideals or feel more deeply the injustice of much in our present-day social system, but Crooks recognises that the only way to get reform is to put your hand to the plough with things as they are, and not wait for the millennium before getting to work.
He sees the crooked things of this life as keenly as anyone, but because the things cannot be put wholly straight in his own day he does not hold aloof. He does what he can in the living present to put them as nearly straight as existing machinery makes possible, trusting that the next or some succeeding generation will continue the work until the things are put perfectly straight at last.